She rounded the front of the building to Tarwood Lane and joined a couple of mothers with prams waiting at the bus stop there. She probably made a slightly incongruous figure, still dressed for court in a smart blouse and slacks, heeled shoes and her poshest beige raincoat, but if this was the way she had to do it, there was no real argument. Besides, she only had to wait a short time before the one-fifteen from Crowley town centre to Borsdane Wood turned up. The two young mothers clambered aboard first, Lucy assisting them with their prams. After she’d paid for her own ticket, she climbed the tight stairway to the top deck, where a single fellow passenger rode in the front seat – this was his usual position, mainly because the upstairs security cameras on this bus route were also located at the front, and thus unable to see the persons sitting directly below them.
There was no one else anywhere near, so Lucy slid into the seat immediately behind.
You wouldn’t be able to tell it while he was seated, but Jerry McGlaglen was a tall man, about six-foot three and now aged somewhere in his early sixties. Almost invariably, he dressed in elegant fashion – flannel trousers and matching blazer and tie were his preferred combination, often with a carnation in the buttonhole – though this often jarred with his thin features, sunken cheeks and wispy grey beard and moustache, not to mention his mop of grey hair, which had something of the feather duster about it. When you spoke to him face-on, he had odd-coloured eyes, one blue and one green, and unhealthy, brownish teeth; his personal hygiene wasn’t quite what it had used to be, either. As such, while he might strike an imposing figure from a distance, up close it was strange and rather scuzzy.
‘Why are we persisting with this cloak-and-dagger stuff, Jerry?’ Lucy asked quietly, after the bus recommenced its journey. ‘Can’t we just meet in the pub like everyone else?’
McGlaglen didn’t look around. ‘Because what I am giving you today, my dear, is the biggest tip-off you’re ever likely to receive.’
Lucy nodded. She’d heard this kind of promise before, but to be fair to McGlaglen, he rarely offered anything that wasn’t at least interesting. She clutched the horizontal bar at the top of his seat as they swung around a tight bend.
‘A particularly unpleasant fellow,’ McGlaglen added, ‘a true reprobate and degenerate is in town.’
He’d been given to using flowery language for as long as Lucy had known him; he even delivered it in a dramatic, Shakespearean tone, all traces of his local accent suppressed. It was something to do with his past, she understood, though she’d never questioned him on it. Police informers came in every shape and size; all that mattered was the reliability of their intel.
‘A true degenerate, eh?’ she said. ‘Go on. I’m all ears.’
‘The Creep. You know of this beast, I take it? He’s in the town now … as we speak.’
At first Lucy thought she’d misheard. ‘Sorry … what?’
He neither looked round nor raised his voice. The one thing Jerry McGlaglen defended more zealously that his air of faded flamboyance was his right to anonymity; when imparting information to his police handlers, he was never less than exceptionally wary. He would do nothing whatsoever to attract attention to himself from the ordinary public. To Lucy’s mind that somewhat contradicted his manner of dressing and speaking, but when she’d raised this with him once in the past, he’d replied that his attire served its purpose as a double bluff.
‘They look twice, that is undeniably true. But when all they see is a well-known eccentric, they rarely look again.’
‘The Creep?’ she said, puzzled. ‘You mean the lunatic who hangs around cashpoints in Birmingham late at night, robbing people at sword-point. You say he’s in town? You mean here … in Crowley?’
‘This is the story I’ve been told, my dear.’
‘Jerry … how is that possible?’
‘Why … I’d imagine he bought himself a ticket at New Street, climbed onto a train and headed north.’
‘Funny man. I’ll rephrase the question. Why is he here … I mean in the Northwest?’
‘How could I know? Perhaps he has relatives here. He was unlikely to linger in the Midlands after what happened during his last attack, don’t you think?’
Lucy pondered the info with rapidly growing interest. Even though Birmingham was eighty miles south, she’d read all about the case on various bulletins. The offender was basically a mugger, but the West Midlands press had named him ‘the Creep’ because of his crazy fixed grin, which owed possibly to a mask or heavy make-up. A Joker lookalike, then; a comic-book madman. But there hadn’t been much to laugh about for his victims, who’d not just lost wads of cash but, even when they’d complied, had been slashed with what appeared to be an old-fashioned but well-honed cavalry sabre. Invariably it had inflicted gruesome wounds, and in the case of the most recent victim, had proved fatal.
She leaned forward. ‘How’ve you heard about this, Jerry?’
‘Now, my dear … as you know, I never divulge such things. But as you also know, my sources are impeccable.’
‘What’s the Creep’s name? I mean his real name.’
‘This I cannot tell.’
‘Cannot, or will not?’
‘Cannot.’
‘So where will I find him?’
‘Alas, I have no answer for that either.’
‘Jerry …’ she leaned closer to his ear, ‘you seriously think you’re going to get paid for this? Passing on an unfounded rumour that this guy may be in Crowley … may be? And giving us nothing else whatsoever?’
‘I suspected you’d be hostile. Ignorance, as always, breeds contempt. I imagine I will only get paid if you apprehend this scoundrel … as per our usual arrangement. How you make that happen is beyond my control.’
‘Do you have anything else on him at all?’
‘It is my belief that he will have come here to work.’
‘Work?’
‘To continue his bloody reign.’
‘Seriously?’ Lucy wondered if he was winding her up. ‘You think this bloke’s on the run from a murder charge, and a few weeks later he’s just going to blow all that by starting again only an hour up the railway line?’
McGlaglen shook his head. ‘I know no more about this case than you, Miss Clayburn, but I have read sufficient disgusting detail to form an opinion that for this malefactor it is as much about the swordplay as it is the money. I appreciate that sudden fear has driven him to change towns. But really … how long can such a depraved individual resist temptation?’
Lucy had also read plenty of material regarding the Creep, and on reflection, it wasn’t difficult to draw a similar conclusion. In each incident thus far, the offender had inflicted unnecessary violence; the slashing of the APs with his sword after they had handed over their wallets was completely uncalled-for, which implied that at least part of the abnormal gratification he drew from these attacks was from seeing first the terror of his victims, and then their blood. It might indeed be that this was all of it, the cash obtained little more than a bonus. And if that was the case, it seemed likely that he’d struggle to resist the impulse when it came. It could even be that, while here in Manchester lying low, maybe staying with friends or holed up in a B&B,